French authorities have detained five teenagers for desecrating about 250 gravestones in the Jewish cemetery in Sarre-Union in the Alsace region of eastern France near the German border and damaging a Holocaust memorial there.
Media reports say the youths ranged in age from 15 to 17 and had no previous criminal record. Four live in Sarre-Union and one lives in Luneville. Following widespread publicity about the desecration, one of the youths turned himself in to police Monday morning and gave the names of the other four, according to the local prosecutor.
The prosecutor said the devastation took place last Thursday afternoon; most of the affected headstones were toppled and some were defaced or otherwise damaged; the teens also tried to open some of the graves.
The desecration was discovered Sunday, and special investigators were sent to the scene.
Agence France Presse noted that it was not the first time the cemetery, founded in the late 18th century, had been vandalized: In 1988, around 60 grave markers were knocked over, and 54 tombs were wrecked in 2001. The Associated Press characterized the latest vandalism at the cemetery as of “an unusually large scale.”
The attack came amid fears of rising anti-Semitism in France, just a month since the massacres in Paris by Islamist extremists at the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket left 17 dead. It was discovered the day after a gunman killed a security man at the synagogue in Copenhagen after killing a film director at a debate on free speech.
French leaders sharply condemned the vandal attack on the cemetery, with French President Francois Hollande branding it an “odious and barbaric act” and Prime Minister Manuel Valls, in a Twitter post, calling it “anti-Semitic and ignoble.”
Hollande issued a statement saying that “France is determined to fight relentlessly against anti-Semitism and those who want to attack the nation’s values.”
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said “Every effort will be made to identify, question and bring to justice the person or persons responsible for this despicable act,” He said “The country will not tolerate this new injury which goes against the values that all French people share.”
1 comment on “Jewish cemetery in eastern France vandalized”
A gradual disintegration of the western part of Europe ,call it antisemitism or whatsoever ,the governmental comments like some kind of repetitive fractured narratives,not exploring intense and with passion the why and the who,where there is no love,only self-political
centredness,quite the opposite what is happening in the eastern part of Europe,well- documented by Jewish Heritage Europe,at least a sprinkle hope,it reminds me of LEVITATION ,five fictions,by CYNTHIA
OZICK,stories so powerful by the way of writing,especially the story
Putter messer:Her Work History,Her Ancestry,Her Afterlife……
What happened and happens again and again is a shame ,sharp enough?to fool any comment ,writing or talking about civilization …. !